Georgiaconstituent state of the United States of America. The largest of the U.S. states east of the Mississippi River and by many years the youngest of the 13 former English colonies, Georgia was founded in 1732, at which time its boundaries were even larger—including much of the present-day states of Alabama and Mississippi. Its area of 58,910 square miles (152,576 square kilometres) landscape presents numerous contrasts, with more soil types than any other state as it sweeps from the Appalachian Mountains in the north (on the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina) to the marshes of the Atlantic coast on the southeast and the Okefenokee Swamp (which it shares with Florida) on the south. The Savannah and Chattahoochee rivers describe form much of Georgia’s eastern and western boundaries with South Carolina and Alabama, respectively. The capital is Atlanta.

For most of the 19th century Georgia was the capital of the cotton empire of the South, but poultry products now account for many times the income from cotton. Although industry has far outstripped agriculture in economic importance, a high proportion of industrial workers remain in farm- or forestry-related jobs such as lumber production, food processing, and textile manufacture.

Atlanta has long been the economic and cultural centre of the Southeast. Its name evokes the largely romantic legends of the pre-Civil War South, of the traditions of Southern gentility, and of white-columned mansions along Peachtree Street, its best-known thoroughfare. The history of the state is marked by events of the Civil War: the many major battles fought there, the Confederate prison at Andersonville, in which nearly 13,000 Union prisoners died, and the burning of Atlanta and the devastating March to the Sea by Union forces under General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The degree to which Georgia’s early economy was based on the slave-plantation system. One of the first states to secede from the Union in 1861, Georgia strongly supported the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) during the American Civil War. However, it paid a high price in suffering from the devastation accompanying the Union army’s siege of northern Georgia and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s fiery capture of Atlanta in 1864. Sherman’s subsequent March to the Sea laid waste a broad swath of plantation from Atlanta to Savannah—one of the first examples of total war.

At the same time that post-Civil War Georgians were romanticizing the old plantation, many were also rapidly forsaking agriculture for industry, even embracing the pro-Northern, pro-industry ideology of Atlanta journalist Henry Grady. Subsequently, the manufacture of cotton and iron grew, but the real spur to Georgia’s postwar growth was the expansion of the rail transportation system, which was centred in Atlanta.

The degree to which some of the wounds of this history have been healed in Georgia is most strikingly exemplified in modern contemporary Atlanta. Since the 1960s, black citizens have played an increasingly important role in the city’s administration; the first black mayor was elected in 1973. During the same period, Atlanta has become a nationally oriented city, attracting major corporations as well as citizens from all parts of the United States.

Physical and human geographyThe land

This city was home to Martin Luther King, Jr., and, for all practical purposes, it was the headquarters for the civil rights movement. In the 1960s the business community in Atlanta ensured that the kinds of racial conflicts that had damaged the reputation of other Southern cities were not repeated.

By the early 21st century the state’s prosperity was based mainly in the service sector and largely in and around Atlanta, on account of that city’s superior rail and air connections. Atlanta is home to the state’s major utilities and to banking, food and beverage, and information technology industries and is indeed one of the country’s leading locations for corporate headquarters. Propelled especially by Atlanta’s progressive image and rapid economic and population growth, Georgia had by the late 20th century already pulled ahead of other states of the Deep South in terms of overall prosperity and convergence with national socioeconomic norms. The state continues to be a leader in the southern region. Area 58,922 square miles (152,607 square km). Pop. (2000) 8,186,453; (2005 est.) 9,072,576.

Land

Relief

The southernmost portions of the Blue Ridge Mountains cover northeastern and north-central Georgia. In the northwest a limestone valley-and-ridge area predominates above Rome and the Coosa River. The higher elevations extend southward about 75 miles (120

kilometres

km), with peaks such as Kennesaw and Stone mountains rising from the floor of the upper Piedmont. The highest point in the state, Brasstown Bald in the Blue Ridge, reaches to

a height

an elevation of 4,784 feet (1,458 metres) above sea level. Below the mountains the Piedmont extends to the fall line of the rivers—the east-to-west line of Augusta, Milledgeville, Macon, and Columbus. Along the fall region, which is nearly 100 miles (160 km) wide, sandy hills form a narrow, irregular belt. Below these hills the rolling terrain of the coastal plain levels out to the flatlands near the

coast, the “pine barrens”

coast—the pine barrens of the early

days

days—much of which are now cultivated.

Drainage

About half the streams of the state flow into the Atlantic Ocean, and most of the

rest

others travel through Alabama and Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. A few streams in northern Georgia flow into the Tennessee River and then via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers into the

Gulf

gulf. The river basins have not contributed significantly to the regional divisions, which have been defined more by elevations and soils. The inland waters of Georgia consist of some two dozen artificial lakes, about 70,000 small ponds created largely by the federal Soil Conservation Service, and natural lakes in the southwest near Florida. The larger lakes have fostered widespread water recreation.

Because of the region’s bedrock foundation, Piedmont communities and industries must rely on surface runoff for their primary water supply. The

Coastal Plain

coastal plain, underlain by alternating layers of sand, clay, and limestone, draws much of its needed water from underground aquifers.

Increasing

The increasing domestic and industrial use of underground water supplies in Savannah, St. Marys, and Brunswick

threaten

threatens to allow brackish water to invade the aquifers serving these coastal cities.

Soils

From the coast to the fall line, sand and sandy loam predominate, gray near the coast and increasingly red with higher elevations. In the Piedmont and Appalachian regions these traits continue, with an increasing amount of clay in the soils. Land in northern Georgia is referred to as “red land” or “gray land.” In the limestone valleys and uplands in the northwest, the soils are of loam, silt, and clay and may be brown as well as gray or red.

Climate

Maritime tropical air masses dominate the climate in summer, but in other seasons continental polar air masses are not uncommon. The average January temperature in Atlanta is

42° F (6° C

42 °F (6 °C); in August it is

79° F (26° C

79 °F (26 °C). Farther south, January temperatures average

10° F (6° C

10 °F (6 °C) higher, but in August the difference is only about

3° F (2° C

3 °F (2 °C). In northern Georgia

rain

precipitation usually averages from 50 to 60 inches (1,270 to 1,524

millimetres

mm) annually. The east-central areas are drier, with about 44 inches (1,118 mm). Precipitation is more evenly distributed throughout the seasons in northern Georgia, whereas the southern and coastal areas have more summer rains. Snow seldom occurs outside the mountainous northern counties.

Plant and animal life

Because of its mountains-to-the-sea topography, Georgia has a wide

range

spectrum of natural vegetation.

It ranges from maple and hemlock and birch and

Trees range from maples, hemlocks, birches, and beech near Blairsville in the north to

the cypress

cypresses,

tupelo

tupelos, and red

gum

gums of the stream swamps below the fall line and to the marsh

grass

grasses of the coast and islands. Throughout most of the Appalachians,

chestnut

chestnuts,

oak

oaks, and yellow

poplar

poplars are dominant. Much of this area is designated as national forest. The region that extends from the Tennessee border to the fall line has mostly oak and pine, with pines predominating in parts of the west. Below the fall line and outside the swamps, vast stands of pine—longleaf, loblolly, and slash—cover the landscape. Exploitation of these trees for pulpwood is a leading economic activity. Much of the land, which had at one time been cleared of trees for agriculture, has gone back to trees, scrub, and grasses.

Georgia’s wildlife is profuse. There are alligators in the south;

bear

bears, with a hunting season in counties near the mountains and the Okefenokee Swamp; deer, with restricted hunting in most counties; grouse;

opossum

opossums; quail;

rabbit

rabbits;

raccoon

raccoons;

squirrel

squirrels; sea turtles, with no hunting allowed; and

turkey

turkeys, with quite restricted hunting. In general, wildlife is in a period of transition.

Deer have been seen in suburban counties and bears on golf courses near Atlanta, but solid stands of pine and unbroken pasture are not ideal for wildlife.

There is extensive stocking of game birds and fish. The major fish of southern Georgia, except

snook

snooks and bonefish, are in waters off the coast, and

all

most major freshwater game fish of the United States are found in Georgia’s streams and lakes. Some

50

20 species of plants and more than 20 species of

animals

mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles are listed as endangered in the state.

Settlement patterns

Migrations and historical change have tended to blur the traditional regions of Georgia. In an earlier time the coastal mainland and the sea islands were distinct, being separated from the middle part of Georgia by the pine barrens of the lower coastal plain. Rice and sea island cotton were major crops of this area. There was usually a summer exodus of plantation families to the southern highlands and to the North: a Savannah family, for example, might well know more people in Boston, New York City, or Philadelphia than they did in Augusta, Macon, or Columbus. The coastal region and the sea islands of Georgia and South Carolina still support the unique culture of the Gullahs (also called Geechees), blacks who speak a creole language based on colonial English and various West African languages.

Early subsistence farmers, who were known as “crackers” (probably meaning boasters or liars), tilled the land in the thinly populated pine barrens just above the coastal area. There the soil is sandy and poorly drained, and the farms and plantations existed amid near-frontier conditions throughout much of the 19th century.

Beyond the pine barrens to the north and west, a prosperous cotton culture flourished for a period of more than a century. The classic period of cotton plantations and farms before the Civil War was brief in several counties. The white-columned houses generally were built in the county seats, or “courthouse towns,” whereas the majority of the rural homes could be termed no more than substantial farmhouses. The mountainous area of northern Georgia was an area of small subsistence farms and few slaves.

Blacks were long identified with commercial agriculture, which produced rice and sea island cotton on the coast and upland cotton in middle Georgia. Some modern historians use the term Black Belt as a demographic description of middle Georgia, where slavery predominated, though its origin stemmed from the dark soils of Alabama.

Plantations were cultivated by supervised group labour before the Civil War. After the war a family-plot system, called sharecropping or tenant farming, replaced the larger labour groups and reduced immediate supervision. There were two basic arrangements in the sharecrop system with some variations: in middle Georgia the division-by-halves system gave the landowner control of the farm’s management and the sale of the crops that were raised. The more independent landowner of northern Georgia, if he did not own a small farm himself, rented by thirds and fourths and had more control.

Rural Georgia was settled in a pattern of separate farms without unified communities. Area names suggested such centres, but these generally were derived from the names of creeks, mountains, and militia districts. Schools, churches, and stores often drew neighbours in different directions, producing a highly diffused community life. Urban settlements originally served political and commercial purposes as county seats and cotton markets. The fall line cities became railroad points, and later they and some courthouse towns in the upper Piedmont had cotton mills.

Elsewhere the country general store and small local cotton gins declined as the larger towns gradually absorbed the slight commerce and industry. Later, better roads enabled people to travel from these smaller locales to the larger towns and cities. Today shopping centres, neon-lighted restaurants, and service stations are scattered throughout both the rural and urban areas of the state.

The people

In 1752, the year Georgia came under direct rule of the British government, it had only about 3,000 inhabitants, most of them either English or black. Salzburgers from Austria lived at New Ebenezer and Savannah, Scottish Highlanders at Darien, and New England Congregationalists at Sunbury and Midway. Settlement was concentrated on the coast and up the Savannah River to the Augusta area. Irish, German, and other massive immigrations into the United States during the 19th century affected Georgia little, and by 1910 only about 15,000 foreign-born whites resided in the state.

Georgia lost more people than it gained through migration in each decade from 1870 to 1960, but the total population increased steadily due to high birth rates. More whites than blacks left until 1910, generally moving to Southern states to the west; after 1910 the black exodus was greater, generally to the cities of the North. The boll weevil plague of the 1920s devastated the cotton economy and caused massive departures of both races. The white emigration loss almost stopped in the 1950s; thereafter there was a net migration gain of both races.

Mechanized and chemically controlled agriculture, along with abandonment of cultivated farmlands to pastures and pine forests, were major causes of black migrations. Perhaps as important, however, were blacks’ hopes that elsewhere they would find fewer ingrained patterns of discrimination.

The economy

Georgia’s rapid industrialization after 1940 caused a shift in the meaning of such words as “farm” and “industry,” and “agribusiness” has become a term in wide use. More people work in industry than on farms, but a great majority of industrial jobs depend on farm or forest products. Income from poultry is regarded as farm income despite the fact that chickens are raised in factory-like structures; feed prices are quoted for 150-ton lots, and financing is done by complex base-and-incentive arrangements—all indicating an extensive and highly developed agribusiness.

More conventional industries, such as automobile assembly, exploit the nearness of Atlanta to southeastern markets. Several decades of prosperity have also increased commerce, and a large number of New York City stores have branch stores in Atlanta and other Georgia cities.

The federal government affects Georgia’s economy through direct purchases from industry, but more through payrolls at the several major military installations in the state. It produces some hydroelectric power and regulates its sale, much of it to rural electric cooperatives.

The state government, on the other hand, functions in the economic sphere largely to promote further industrial development or financial investment in the state, which continues to rely to a large extent on outside money. Atlanta is the financial centre of the Southeast and the headquarters of the Sixth District of the Federal Reserve Bank. More than 60 percent of state revenue comes from taxes levied on sales, licenses, and personal and corporate incomes. Taxes on personal income account for more than one-third of all tax revenue. Local governments in Georgia rely mainly on general property and sales taxes.

Following the pattern in most Southern states, membership in labour unions in Georgia remains below the national average. Given the traditional regional antipathy toward unionization and Georgia’s consistently lower-than-average unemployment rates, this condition appears unlikely to change in any significant degree in the future.

ResourcesGeorgia is one of the nation’s major producers of building stone and crushed

stone. Pickens county in northern Georgia People

Population composition

By the early 21st century Georgia was among the most populous states in the country. The population was mostly of European ancestry (white), about two-thirds, and African American, nearly one-third. A much smaller fraction of the state’s residents were of Asian, Hispanic, or Native American descent. Much of the white population has deep roots in Georgia, but, compared with other states in the Deep South, such as Alabama and South Carolina, a higher percentage of the population was born outside the state. Religious affiliations are predominantly Protestant, with the Baptist and Methodist churches particularly strong within the African American community.

Settlement patterns

Georgia’s settlement patterns are marked by as much variety as its physical geography. The state’s indigenous population had already established a rich and complex village-based civilization by the time of European contact in the early 1500s. In the 1700s British settlement precipitated cultural conflict with the Creek (Muskogee), which intensified as white settlers moved steadily westward in the latter part of that century and into the early 1800s. One of the original English colonies and one of the first states in the union, Georgia emerged after the American Revolution as a plantation society that grew rice and cotton and depended heavily on a growing black African slave population.

During the 20th century Georgia’s population gradually lost its rural character as the state’s major cities expanded. In the 1980s and ’90s much of the old cotton regions of the southwestern and central parts of the state continued to experience population losses; however, these losses were offset to a large extent by substantial gains in suburban Atlanta, which spread outward as far as 50 miles (80 km). The areas around Savannah and Brunswick on the Atlantic coast have also experienced rapid growth. Among the Southern states, Georgia generally has been second only to Florida in population growth since the 1970s, and its growth surpassed even that of Florida in the 1990s.

Economy

In the 20th century Georgia continued to follow its Southern neighbours in shifting from an economy that relied heavily on agriculture to one that concentrated on manufacturing and service activities. Some four-fifths of the jobs in the state are in services, including government, finance and real estate, trade, construction, transportation, and public utilities. Manufacturing accounts for many of the remaining jobs, with agriculture-related activities employing only a fraction of the workforce. In the late 20th century Georgia’s economic performance surpassed that of most other states in the Deep South, and by the early 21st century Georgia’s economy had become one of the strongest in the country.

Agriculture and forestry

With the continuing consolidation of farms into fewer but larger units and the advent of a pervasive agribusiness, Georgia has followed nationwide trends in agriculture that have ultimately contributed to a decrease in agriculture-related employment. The poultry industry is generally controlled by a few large companies that parcel out their work to small farmers and supply them with modern poultry-raising facilities. Cattle and swine raising are important, especially in the southern part of the state. Cash receipts from livestock and livestock products exceed those from crops. Cotton is still one of the major crops, although its value is far below the peak reached in the early 20th century. Georgia is a leading state in pecan and peanut (groundnut) production and ranks high in the production of peaches and tobacco. Corn (maize), squash, cabbage, and melons are also important crops.

Although Georgia’s virgin timberlands have been cut over, the state remains among those with the most acres of commercial forestland. Lumber, plywood, and paper are major products. Georgia is the only state where pine forests are still tapped to produce naval stores.

Resources and power

Georgia is one of the country’s major producers of building stone and crushed stone, as well as cement, sand, and gravel. Pickens county in the state’s northern sector has one of the richest marble deposits in the world.

Kaolin is

Georgia is also the country’s prime producer of kaolin, which is taken from vast pits in

middle Georgia, and the state is the major producer in the United States. Phosphate deposits in the southern

the central part of the state

are largely unexploited, but this region’s ample reserves of artesian well water are proving useful for agricultural irrigation.

Georgia’s virgin timberlands have been cut over, but the state ranks first in the nation in number of acres of commercial forest. Taxation of the state’s timber-growing lands is an internal political issue, with growth rates versus tax rates a crucial argument. Lumber, plywood, and paper are major products, but Georgia is especially known for its large production of naval stores from its pine forests.

Georgia lies to the south of the states that benefit from the many hydroelectric dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and waterpower contributes only about 6 percent of its electrical energy. Petroleum, natural gas, and butane pipelines come into the state from the Southwest. Coastal waters provide working grounds for a number of Georgia fishermen, with shrimp and crab being the main catches.

IndustryIn terms of manufacturing employment, the most important of Georgia’s industries are textiles and apparel, food processing, transportation equipment, electrical and electronic equipment, and paper and lumber. Cotton textile production

.

The state relies primarily on fossil fuels for generation of electricity; nearly two-thirds of the state’s power is derived from coal-fired thermal plants. A small but growing fraction of Georgia’s power comes from natural gas. Nuclear energy is also important, with two plants supplying nearly one-fourth of the state’s electricity.

Manufacturing

Although manufacturing declined in Georgia in the early 21st century (following a national pattern), the sector remains an important source of employment and a significant contributor to the state’s economy. Leading industries include food processing, as well as the production of textiles and apparel, paper and lumber, chemicals, plastics and rubber, automobiles, machinery, transportation equipment, and electrical and electronic supplies. The soft drink Coca-Cola originated in Atlanta in the 1880s, and the Coca-Cola Company (one of the earliest multinational corporations) remains a major manufacturing establishment in the city. Cotton textile manufacturing has occupied a major sector of Georgia’s economy since the late 19th century. The continuation of specialization in textiles is shown in the great number of rug and carpet mills in northern Georgia.

The concentration of looming and weaving skills there make the state one of the major textile producers in the nation. Manufactured items include airplanes, automobiles, mobile homes, chemicals, and processed foods.

Agriculture

With the continuing consolidation of farms into fewer but larger units and the advent of a pervasive agribusiness, Georgia has followed nationwide trends in agriculture. Much of the poultry industry is conducted by large companies that parcel out their work to small farmers and supply them with modern poultry-raising facilities. Cattle and swine raising are important, especially in the southern part of the state. Cash receipts from livestock and livestock products exceed those from crops. Cotton is still one of the major crops, although its value is far below the peak reached in the early 20th century. Georgia is the leading state in peanut (groundnut) production and ranks high in tobacco. Corn (maize) and soybeans follow peanuts in value. Peaches have become especially identified with Georgia, and pecans and watermelons are grown nearly everywhere in the state.

While employment in the textile and apparel industries dropped in the 1980s and ’90s, the state added jobs in printing and publishing and in the manufacture of industrial machinery and electronic equipment.

Services and labour

There has been massive growth in the service sector since the mid-20th century, notably in construction, retail, food and beverages, communications, information technology, and transportation. Tourism is also an important component of service activities. With its growing number of attractions, Atlanta draws the largest number of tourists each year.

Beginning in the late 1990s, new jobs were created in the state at a rate well above the national average. Most of this growth took place in the service sector and was concentrated in the Atlanta area. Georgia has also been a leader in high-technology employment.

Transportation

Water transportation determined the location of Georgia’s first cities.

As early as 1790 William Longstreet of Augusta was experimenting with steam-powered craft on the Savannah River.

By the late 1820s, river steamers were carrying large cargoes of cotton downstream from collecting warehouses at the fall line to Savannah and other export centres.

The Savannah, equipped with auxiliary steam power, sailed from its namesake port to Liverpool in 1819 to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.Navigation on 500 miles of inland waterways has been

Railroads replaced water transport in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but more recently navigation on 500 miles (800 km) of inland waterways was revived, and a state port authority

has

created barge service at Augusta, Columbus, Bainbridge, Savannah, and Brunswick for the distribution of chemical, wood, and mineral products. Savannah is one of the leading

port

ports on the

Southern

southern Atlantic

seaboard

coast, in terms of tonnage of cargo handled

.Milledgeville was briefly the centre of an emerging road system for the settled counties in eastern Georgia and for the old military and post road running through Indian territories to Alabama

, and has one of the country’s major container facilities.

Atlanta, originally called Terminus on the early railroad survey maps, had a near-optimum location for all but water transport, thus making it a hub of railroad transportation for the Southeast after the Civil War. With the advent of highways and then of air traffic, the city maintained its focal position. Three interstate highways intersect in downtown Atlanta.

More than a dozen cities in the state have commercial air service. Atlanta’s Hartsfield

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is

by some measures

one of the world’s busiest

. A rapid transit system began operating in the Atlanta area in 1979.Administration and social conditionsGovernmentIn 1982 Georgia adopted

airports. It is also the hub of the state’s aviation network, a system that includes several other airports offering commercial service.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

In 1983 Georgia ratified its 10th constitution, a document characterized by a reduction in the number of local amendments. The structure of state government

tends to sever governmental from political processes, thereby limiting

limits the appointive powers of the governor

. The

, but the executive branch nonetheless exercises considerable control over state agencies by virtue of its major role in shaping the state’s annual budget. The governor is elected to a four-year term but is limited to serving two terms.

The Georgia General Assembly consists of the 56-member Senate and the 180-member House of Representatives and meets annually in 40-day sessions;

districts

in 1972, districts of approximately equal population size replaced counties as units of representation.

Like all other areas of government in Georgia, the courts reflect a marked shift from an earlier day of highly politicized complexity to a more centralized and professionalized system

Various courts at several levels make up the state’s judiciary. Probate courts, magistrate courts, and municipal courts function at the lowest level, with superior courts, state courts, and juvenile courts forming the next tier. The Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court form the capstone of the state judicial system.

Georgia has many levels of local government, including 159 counties, about 533 municipalities, and more than 385 special districts

Judges at all levels are elected for either four- or six-year terms.

At the local level, Georgia has 159 counties, more than 500 municipalities, and hundreds of special districts (or authorities). Counties often perform municipal-type services. Independently and through multicounty cooperative districts,

they

counties operate forestry units, airports, hospitals, and libraries.

Most counties are governed by an elected Board of Commissioners.

Georgia politics has been in flux since the 1960s. Voting patterns have changed, and distinctions among local, state, and national politics have increased. Republican or third-party candidates have carried the state in presidential elections since 1964, with the exception of 1976 and 1980, when Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who had been governor of Georgia in 1971–75, won the state’s presidential vote. Local politics and the “courthouse rings” (local elites) remain almost universally Democratic; and Democrats, while remaining shy of identification with the more liberal national party, continue to win the state house offices. Republicans, however, have won seats in Congress.

The political idiom has changed as well. Explicit racial demagoguery is no longer in evidence. Campaigns are long, and, with only occasional captive audiences, gubernatorial candidates are forced to stump and shake hands with the voters in a way that was once unnecessary.

Black precincts in Atlanta and Macon that were 80 to 90 percent Republican in 1956 are now Democratic by that margin or more. Whites and blacks in rural and less-affluent urban areas may vote for candidates on racial issues, whereas rural elites and affluent suburbanites tend to vote for either party depending on the nature of the contest and the commitments of the candidates.

The Civil Rights movement in Georgia has been characterized by legal action, many nonviolent and a few violent confrontations, selective buying campaigns, voter registration, and education. The movement has touched life in rural Georgia only very little. In cities and in settings of high visibility—offices, airports, stores, restaurants, and schools—blacks occupy roles dramatically different from those of earlier decades

An elected board of commissioners governs most counties.

Health and welfare

Georgia has a progressive mental health program, largely the legacy of systematic reforms initiated in the early 1970s by Gov. Jimmy Carter. Regional hospitals for evaluation, emergency, and short-term treatment have been established throughout the state. In addition, there are dozens of community health care centres for outpatient treatment. A number of general hospitals have been built through federal programs. Emory University in Atlanta has nationally recognized medical research programs.

Georgia offers numerous programs in family and children’s services. The Department of Public Health supports many state and regional health and development centres targeting adolescents. The state also aids colleges in training welfare workers, whose activities are supplemented by a widespread volunteer network.

Education

Public education in Georgia dates from the passage of a public school act in 1870. Since 1945 the ages for compulsory attendance have been from

six

6 to 15 years.

Since 1964 state support of public schools has been for a period of nine months per year.

The racial integration of public schools increased private-school enrollments dramatically. In 1985 the General Assembly passed the Quality Basic Education Act, which substantially revised the formula for allocating state funds to local school systems. With increased funding for schools in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, significant improvements were made in the state’s education system. The state provided multiple tools and resources for teachers, systemized the instruction for problem learners, and implemented research-based practices and other progressive methodologies to advance student achievement.

Public institutions of higher learning

,

are unified under a

unified

Board of Regents

, are headed by

. Among the oldest and most prominent state institutions are the University of Georgia (chartered 1785; opened 1801) in Athens

;

, the Medical College of Georgia (chartered in 1828; became part of the university system in 1950) in Augusta

;

, and the Georgia Institute of Technology (1885) and Georgia State University (1913), both located in Atlanta. Other

state colleges and junior

public two- and four-year colleges are spread across the state so that

95 percent of

virtually the entire population is within 35 miles

of a college or university

(55 km) of an institution of higher learning. The

four

undergraduate institutions (including Morehouse and Spelman colleges) and the graduate and professional schools of the Atlanta University Center, all

located on

historically black institutions and together occupying a single campus, are at the forefront of

black

African American higher education

in the United States.Health and welfare

Georgia has a modern mental health program. Regional hospitals for evaluation, emergency, and short-term treatment have been established throughout the state to serve communities within a 50-mile radius. In addition, there are approximately 60 community health care centres for outpatient treatment. A number of general hospitals have been built through federal programs.

Georgia has imaginative programs in family and children’s services. There are state and regional youth-development centres for persons under 17. The state aids colleges in training welfare workers, whose activities are supplemented by a widespread volunteer program

and are among the numerous private colleges in Georgia.

Cultural life

Atlanta is not only the cultural centre of

the Southeast. Its memorial arts centre

Georgia but also a major cosmopolitan hub of the South. As such, it is home to numerous museums and attractions. Its Woodruff Arts Center includes the High Museum of Art (1905) and a school of the visual arts, with performing facilities for its symphony orchestra and a professional resident theatre, both of which have premiered new works. The city’s Fernbank Museum of Natural History (1992) was in 2001 the first to display a specimen of Argentinosaurus, believed to be the world’s largest dinosaur, and the Georgia Aquarium opened in Atlanta in 2005. Atlanta also has cooperative galleries run by painters and sculptors, and there is an active group of filmmakers.

Elsewhere in the state there are regional ballet companies

,

and numerous community theatres

perform in more than 30 localities

. In addition to instruction in theatre, dance, the visual arts, and music in many colleges, Georgia Institute of Technology has a school of architecture, and the University of Georgia has a school of environmental design. Dozens of public museums and college galleries exhibit art, and Clark Atlanta University has a notable

Afro-

African American collection. In 1988 Atlanta hosted the first National Black Arts Festival, a major annual event that has continued into the 21st century.

Georgia is rich in traditional arts and crafts, especially in the mountainous north. The craft of tufted fabrics was a major factor in attracting the carpet industry that developed around Dalton.

Other handicraft workers find sales opportunities through country fairs in Hiawassee and nearby Gatlinburg, Tenn., and at many other art festivals across the state.

A mountain arts cooperative has a store in Tallulah Falls, and craft shops are attached to several art galleries.

A bulletin of the state’s agriculture department gives free advertising for crafts, and a quarterly publication describes many of the old craft techniques.Traditional music is sung by folk groups on the sea islands and in the mountains.

Country music conventions are held in northern Georgia—with some tension between purists and users of electronic equipment. In rural churches of

the northwest

northwestern Georgia, unaccompanied

shape-note, or “fa-so-la,”

singing from the Sacred Harp

songbook

shape-note hymnal remains strong, and throughout the area many prayers and sermons are delivered

in singsong.Georgia

melodically.

The state has produced some of the best-known figures in American popular music. Ray Charles helped forge soul music from rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel, and his hit rendition of Georgia on My Mind helped establish it as the state song. Little Richard was one of the early stars of rock and roll, and the Allman Brothers Band pioneered the Southern rock genre. Gladys Knight and the Pips recorded numerous chart-topping songs in the 1960s and ’70s that have become soul and rhythm-and-blues standards.

A number of Georgia natives have achieved international recognition in literature. Two of the most notable authors are Alice Walker, whose novel The Color Purple (1982) on African American life in the South won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into award-winning cinema and stage versions, and Margaret Mitchell, whose enduringly popular American Civil War epic Gone with the Wind (1936) was adapted into one of the great classics of American cinema. In the late 19th century Joel Chandler Harris wrote a series of stories based on African American trickster tales (collected as Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings [1880]) that have remained a vital part of American folkloric tradition.

Numerous buildings, districts, and archaeological sites across the state have been designated national historic landmarks. Among these is the Old Governor’s Mansion in Milledgeville, dating from the period (1804–68) when Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia. Similarly, the Savannah Historic District embraces much of the original town layout and architecture of the 18th century. In the state’s mountainous northwest region, the Etowah Mounds of 10th-century Mississippian culture have been granted landmark status.

Georgia has a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities. Stone Mountain Park near Decatur (eastern suburb of Atlanta) is noted not only for its natural environment but for the massive Confederate memorial relief carved into the mountain’s open granite face. The mountainous north is dominated by

the

Chattahoochee National Forest, which includes the Cohutta Wilderness Area. On the coast is Cumberland Island National Seashore, which comprises part of that large barrier island. Numerous other national wildlife areas and refuges are found throughout the coastal zone. The unique character of Okefenokee Swamp is nurtured and preserved through the administration

ofthe

of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness Area, as well as the Stephen C. Foster and Laura S. Walker

State Park

state park facilities found there. Georgia

also

maintains a system of state parks that offer a wide range of outdoor recreational experiences, from ocean surf bathing to mountain hiking and climbing.

Though generally conservative, the press in Georgia has supported the more liberal statewide candidates in recent decades. The Atlanta Constitution has been recognized as one of the nation’s outstanding newspapers. The Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia oversees competition for the George Foster Peabody Awards for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcasting

Georgia holds a place of prominence in national and international competitive sports. Atlanta is home to various professional sports teams including the Braves (baseball), the Falcons (gridiron football), the Hawks (basketball), and the Thrashers (ice hockey). On the international circuit, Atlanta hosted the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, an undertaking that not only drew thousands of world-class athletes to the city but also attracted millions of visitors to the state. In professional golf, Augusta National Golf Club hosts the prestigious Masters Tournament each April. Collegiate gridiron football is a popular fall pastime, with the University of Georgia typically fielding a strong squad.

More than 100 newspapers, most of them weeklies, are published in Georgia. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the state’s most widely read newspaper and has a national reputation. Georgia has hundreds of radio stations and several dozen television stations. Cable News Network (CNN), the first cable television channel to offer continuous broadcasting, was established in Atlanta in 1980 and later became one of the leaders in domestic and international television journalism.

History

Prehistoric period

The first inhabitants of what is now Georgia found their way into the area during the period from about 10,000 to 8000 BC. A migratory hunting people equipped 12,000 years ago. Equipped with finely worked flint projectile points, these so-called migratory hunters of the Paleo-Indians Indian period appear to have built small, seasonally occupied camps as they followed the movements of their large animal prey. Members of the culture cultures that arose between 8000 and 1000 BC, known as Archaic, developed —during the Archaic period—developed a more diversified food supply but continued the seasonal migration of their ancestors. Permanent or to semipermanent village settlement in Georgia came with the emergence of the Woodland culture in the period 1000 BC to AD 900. Small, widely dispersed, permanently occupied villages were inhabited by the Woodland agriculturalists, who supplemented their harvests with a variety of wild foods. Georgia The area’s Woodland Indians peoples left their most lasting mark in the form of large mounds built of thousands of basketfuls of clay and earth. Some mounds contained human burials and elaborately worked jewelry, pottery, and figurines. Other mounds Others did not contain burials but were built in the shape shapes of animals. The best-known of these is the Rock Eagle in what is now Putnam countycentral Georgia, a large complex of quartz rocks laid out in the shape of a bird.

Spanish exploration

By the time Hernando de Soto led the first European expedition into the area about 1540, the The Mississippian culture, so called after named for the river valley in which it flourished, had established its influence across the Southeast, with the Creek and Cherokee groups predominating in what is now Georgia. De Soto found a population of master farmers whose large permanent villages were built around enormous earthen temple mounds resembling the flat-topped pyramids found in Central America. Their succeeded the Woodland culture and continued the tradition of building mounds, which were used for ceremonial purposes and as sites for the homes of chiefs. This culture developed hierarchical social orders, with powerful, centralized governments headed by chiefs. Its reliable and productive system of agriculture, based on corn, beans, squash, pumpkin, and tobacco, often provided surplusesin most years. . The Mississippian culture was dominant in the area when the Europeans arrived in the 1500s.

Spanish exploration

About 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, on a quest for silver and gold, led the first European expedition into the area that is now Georgia. There he encountered the highly organized agriculturalists of Mississippian culture. Directly or indirectly, the Spanish expedition was disastrous for the Indiansindigenous population. In addition to the hundreds of people they killed or enslaved, the explorers were ultimately responsible—through the diseases they unknowingly introduced, such as measles, smallpox, and whooping cough—for the deaths of thousands and the final decline of the Mississippian culture in Georgia.

In 1565 the Spanish, responding to a French attempt to settle on the southeastern coast, began their occupation of Florida. From the stronghold at St. Augustine, Spain began to exert an increasing influence on the Indians native peoples of Georgia. A line of Roman Catholic missions and associated military posts were established on the barrier islands along the Georgia coast. The lives and settlement patterns of the original inhabitants of the coastal Indians areas were profoundly changed as they were converted to Christianity and persuaded to adopt a sedentary life-style lifestyle in compact villages. Known to the Spanish as Guale, the Georgia coastal zone remained under the mission-presidio system for a century. In the second half of the 17th century, increasing pressures from the British in South Carolina eventually led to the withdrawal of the Spanish missions from Guale. As Spanish power waned and British power grew, the area of modern present-day Georgia came to be known as the Debatable Land. The South Carolinians Carolinian colonists began to build an Indian a trade monopoly in the area with the indigenous residents of the region but were slow to attempt permanent settlement south of the Savannah River.

English settlement

A trust for establishing the colony of Georgia was granted a charter by George II (after for whom the colony was named) in 1732, long after the large English migrations of the 17th century to North America. The prime mover in obtaining the charter was the English soldier and philanthropist James Edward Oglethorpe, who sought to found a colony where the poor of England could get a new start. He and other trustees encouraged the settlers to produce wines, silks, and spices, and thus relieve England of a dependency on foreign sources. The colony also would serve as a bulwark against the Spanish and French to the south and west.

The first English settlement in Georgia was made at Savannah in 1733. Some colonists paid their way; the colony’s trustees paid the expenses of others. Oglethorpe directed the affairs of the colony, primarily its military operations. Essential to the trustees’ utopian plan was a tightly structured settlement system designed to create a population of yeoman farmers living in compact villages and towns and cultivating outlying garden and small farm tracts. Slavery was prohibited in order to avoid the growth of large plantations. Like most such schemes, the colony failed to live up to the trustees’ vision. Their most notable success was the planning and construction of Savannah. Faced with unrest and emigration, the trustees surrendered all power in the colony to the British government in 1752, a year before their charter was to expire. Plantation agriculture, based mainly on the production of sugar, rice, and indigo, took hold. It relied heavily on slavery and became the mainstay of the colony’s economy.

Revolution and growth

In a thrust of pre-Revolutionary inland migration before the American Revolution, substantial settlement of Georgia began as a belt extending that extended along the Savannah River that and reached the lower Piedmont. Georgia’s response to the revolutionary Revolutionary tensions was complexand resulted , resulting in veritable civil warfare between loyalists and patriots and a time of chaos for most Georgians. After the Revolution, settlement expanded rapidly, especially westward from Augusta into the future “cotton counties” of middle central Georgia.Speculations in public lands acquired through the removal of the Creek and Cherokee Indians from the state

The westward movement of British and then American settlers beginning in the mid-18th century encroached on the lands of the Cherokee and Muskogee (a subdivision of Creek). As settlers pushed west, conflicts with these peoples broke out on a regular basis. Among the Muskogee, internal conflict also arose as the community struggled over whether to resist white encroachment and over what sorts of resistance, if any, should be employed. A series of treaties, which the Cherokee and Muskogee were forced to sign, resulted in successive cessions of territory to Georgia. Land acquired after the removal of the native peoples paved the way for the development of a largely commercial agriculture, which soon became after the 1790s was overwhelmingly dominated by cotton. The Indian removal provided a traumatic chapter in the state’s history. The Creeks and Cherokee, two of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast, were removed under force of arms by way of the Trail of Tears systematic displacement of the Cherokee and Muskogee continued into the 19th century and was consummated in 1838–39 by the forced removal of the Cherokee westward in the infamous Trail of Tears migration to federally owned lands in what is now Oklahoma.

The slavery controversy and

part of Oklahoma. By that time most Muskogee had already been forced out of Georgia.

Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

By the mid-19th century , most a vast majority of white Georgians, like most Southerners, had come to view slavery as economically indispensable to their society. Georgia, with the greatest number of large plantations of any state in the South, had in many respects come to epitomize plantation culture. When the American Civil War camebegan in 1861, most white Southerners, southerners (slave owner owners or not, ) joined in the defense of their common heritage and culture. Georgia, with the greatest number of true plantations, had in many respects come to epitomize this culturethe Confederate States of America (Confederacy), which Georgia had helped to create.

The war involved Georgians at every level. Coastal attacks and sporadic raids into the state were a prelude to the attack on Atlanta in the late summer of 1864, when General William T. Sherman The Union army occupied parts of coastal Georgia early on, disrupting the plantation and slave system well before the outcome of the war was determined. In 1864 Union troops under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman invaded Georgia from the north. Sherman and his troops laid siege to Atlanta in late summer and burned much of the city before finally capturing it. Sherman then launched his March to the Sea. In mid-November Sherman initiated a plan to cut a , a 50-mile- (80-km-) wide swath of total destruction across Georgia . Starting from Atlanta , the left wing moved along the route of the Georgia Railroad to Madison and Milledgeville, while the right wing went overland to Savannah, some 200 miles (320 km) to the southeast, leaving a broad belt of almost total destruction.The ; Savannah, captured in late December, was largely spared.

In the aftermath of the Civil Warhas been seen as a return to essentially frontier conditions in Georgia. Georgians no longer enjoyed mastery over their environment, and new modes of social and economic organization emerged in efforts to regain such mastery. Agriculture still appeared to hold Georgia’s most promising future, Georgia farmers attempted to restore the state’s agricultural economy, but the relationship between land and labour was changed dramatically. After some experimentation with various contractual arrangements for farm labour following emancipation, the system of sharecropping, or paying the owner for use of the land with some portion of the crop, became a generally accepted institution in Georgia and throughout the South. The system encouraged both the landowner and the sharecropper to strive for large harvests and thus often led to the land being “mined” mined of its fertility. Almost invariably, land and capital remained in white hands , while labour remained largely, though not entirely, black. This entrenched pattern was not broken until the scourge of the boll weevil in the late 1910s and early 1920s ’20s ended the long reign of cotton.

The 20th century

The Great Depression began a decade early in Georgia. The collapse of the cotton industry led to a New Deal program of agricultural diversification encouraged by both state and federal agencies. Peaches and peanuts made important contributions to the Georgia farm economy, and tobacco, livestock, dairying, and poultry and egg production got under way on a commercial scale. As World War II began, thousands of Georgians became involved in the war effort, and federal funds were directed toward military training facilities and defense industries located in the state.

The postwar years saw economic prosperity increase rapidly in Georgia. After 1950 more Georgians were employed in manufacturing than in agriculture. At the same time, efforts to end racial segregation began. After some initial opposition, integration of the state’s colleges and universities was undertaken in the 1960s, and integration of public elementary and secondary schools followed.

Impatient with the slow pace of change, many black Georgians turned to social activism, most notably Atlanta-born Martin Luther King, Jr., whose advocacy of nonviolent struggle for racial equality brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Increasing numbers of black voters led to the election of blacks to state and local offices, including the election in 1973 of Maynard Jackson as the first black mayor of Atlanta.

Georgia’s advances in the spheres of politics, civil rights, and economic growth continued. The state received national recognition with the 1976 election of President Jimmy Carter, the first Georgian ever elected to that office.

“King Cotton.”

Reconstruction in Georgia was violent and brief. In 1868 the Republican Party came to power in Georgia, with the election of northern-born businessman Rufus Bullock as governor. In turn, the Georgia Democrats and their terrorist arm, the Ku Klux Klan, executed a reign of violence against them, killing hundreds of African Americans in the process. Bullock steadfastly promoted African American equality to no avail, as the Democratic Party, which dismissed Georgia’s Republicans as “scalawags,” regained control in 1871 and set Georgia on a course of white supremacist, low-tax, and low-service government. Former Confederate officers frequently held the state’s highest offices. In the 1890s, in the midst of an agricultural depression, a political alliance of farmers, including African Americans, generally known as Populists and led by Thomas E. Watson, challenged and defeated the conservatives, who had been in control and worked initially for policies to help the economic concerns of small farmers and against the interests of planters and the railroads.

In the late 19th century some Georgians began to promote an industrial economy, especially the development of textile manufacturing. Atlanta newspaper editor and journalist Henry Grady became a leading voice for turning toward a more industrial, commercial-based economy in Georgia. By the 1880s and ’90s the manufacture of textiles and iron began to expand, and Atlanta grew steadily as a commercial centre based heavily on railroad transportation.

Georgia since c. 1900

Racial conflict marked the state’s history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1890s Democrats disenfranchised African American voters and created a system of segregation to separate blacks and whites in all public places throughout Georgia. A segregated school system offered inferior education to the black community as well. Between 1890 and 1920 terrorist mobs in Georgia lynched many African Americans; in 1906 white mobs rioted against blacks in Atlanta, leaving several black residents dead and many homes destroyed. During those same years, however, several notable colleges for African Americans were constructed in Atlanta, including Morehouse for men and Spelman for women, making the city one of the centres of African American cultural and intellectual life in the country. Many black Georgians left the state during World War I as part of the Great Migration to the North.

In the 1920s the state continued to depend on cotton production, but crop destruction by the boll weevil soon caused an agricultural depression. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought even greater suffering to the state and forced hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers out of farming. Georgia became emblematic of Southern poverty, in part because Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt made frequent visits to Warm Springs and witnessed for himself the devastating conditions in the state. Although most Georgians liked Roosevelt’s policies, Gov. Eugene Talmadge often condemned them, and other Georgia politicians opposed the New Deal’s economic reforms that threatened to undermine the traditional dominance of farmers.

World War II revitalized Georgia’s economy as agricultural prices rose and U.S. military bases in the state were expanded—notably Fort Benning in Columbus. Marietta became the site of a giant factory where B-29 bombers were built. The war also altered Georgia’s politics toward a more progressive orientation, especially when Ellis Arnall became governor in 1943.

After World War II, Georgians were forced to address the state’s racial conflicts when African Americans began to challenge segregation. Most white Georgians continued to defend the system, and segregationist Herman Talmadge reclaimed the governor’s chair his father had held earlier. At the same time, writer Lillian Smith published works and gave speeches that called for an end to segregation. Black Georgians began a massive voter-registration campaign and succeeded in elevating their political influence to a level higher than that of African Americans in other Deep South states. With the rise of direct-action protests, starting with the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955–56, African Americans in Georgia became increasingly involved in the fight against segregation. Most notable was the work of Atlanta native Martin Luther King, Jr., who established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 in that city and from there led a series of protests around the country that became known as the civil rights movement. Two other civil rights organizations, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Regional Council, also conducted activities from Atlanta to challenge the racial status quo. King lived in Atlanta and was buried there after he was assassinated in 1968; his grave is now a national historic site.

Atlanta’s business community pursued a more open, progressive approach to the African American community than did many other Southern cities. In the 1960s Mayor William Hartsfield and Atlanta’s major corporations negotiated with the local black community to prevent the massive civil rights protests that had disrupted such Southern cities as Birmingham, Ala., and Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. Racial divisions and discrimination were still harsh, but white Atlantans were generally more open to communication with African American leadership. In the 1970s, as Atlanta’s black population became a majority in the city, African Americans were elected to high office, including Andrew Young to the U.S. Congress in 1972 and Maynard Jackson to the mayor’s office in 1973. Since then, African Americans have been elected to many offices in Atlanta and in southwestern Georgia.

Statewide politics in Georgia were slower to change. Lester Maddox, largely remembered as a prominent opponent of desegregation, was elected governor in 1967. Jimmy Carter succeeded Maddox, governed as a racial moderate, and pushed the state toward a progressive image that was more in line with that of the city of Atlanta. Through the 1976 presidential election of Carter, the first Georgian ever elected to the U.S. presidency, the state gained national recognition. In the 1980s and ’90s Democrats and Republicans competed actively for most offices, and the Republicans captured several congressional seats. Democrats held the governor’s office continuously until the election in 2003 of Sonny Perdue, the first Republican governor since 1868.

Since the 1950s Georgia’s economy and population have expanded at a pace much faster than the national average. Most of this growth has occurred in and around Atlanta, which by the end of the 20th century had gained international stature, largely through its hosting of the 1996 Olympic Games.

Detailed overviews of the state, past and present, are found in Writers’ Program, Georgia: A Guide to Its Towns and Countryside (1940, reprinted as Georgia: The WPA Guide to Its Towns and Countryside, 1990), still a useful source; Lawrence R. Hepburn (ed.), Contemporary Georgia (1987); and Thomas W. Hodler and Howard A. Schretter, The Atlas of Georgia (1986). DeLorme Mapping Company, Georgia Atlas & Gazetteer, 5th ed. (19982006), focuses on the state’s topography. James C. Bonner, A History of Georgia Agriculture, 1732–1860 (1964); and Willard Range, A Century of Georgia Agriculture, 1850–1950 (1954), cover an important topic. The treatment of Native Americans in Georgia, in both in prehistoric and historic times, can be found in Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (1976), an excellent and nontechnical overview. Georgia Journal (bimonthly) features articles on Georgia’s arts and crafts, nature, history, and travel.

Introductions to Georgia’s history are presented in Harold H. Martin, Georgia: A Bicentennial History (1977); Kenneth Coleman (ed.), A History of Georgia (1977), a collection of essays; and E. Merton Coulter, Georgia: A Short History, rev. and enlarged ed. (1960), dated but still highly readable, with the flavour of the preintegration South. Francis Lee Utley and Marion R. Hemperley (eds.), Placenames of Georgia: Essays of John H. Goff (1975), informally tells Georgia’s history through accounts of its colorfully colourfully named places. Particular periods are examined in Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia: A History (1976, reissued 1989); Harvey H. Jackson and Phinizy Spalding (eds.), Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia (1984), a collection of scholarly essays; Edward J. Cashin (ed.), Colonial Augusta: “Key of the Indian Countrey” (1986), valuable essays examining the often overlooked early history of Georgia’s backcountry; Michael P. Johnson, Toward a Patriarchal Republic: The Secession of Georgia (1977); Horace Montgomery, Cracker Parties (1950), a study of the politics of antebellum Georgia; John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (1977, reissued 1980); and Numan V. Bartley, From Thurmond to Wallace: Political Tendencies in Georgia, 1948–1968 (1970), a review of post-World War II politics in the state. Along with scholarly articles on all historical periods, The Georgia Historical Quarterly publishes an annual bibliography of Georgia’s history.